Hot Corner Cards opens in Kearney, reviving a passion for sports cards

KEARNEY, Neb. — Mike Johnson has been buying, selling, trading, and collecting sports cards since 1985.

Now, his 40-year hobby is a formal business.

“The collection started to kind of get bigger, bigger and bigger and over the last year or so, we’ve kind of been putting more thought into doing it again for fun,” Johnson said.

Hot Corner Cards & Collectibles opened this month in Kearney across from Hy-Vee, but it isn’t Johnson’s first foray into the field. He started a similar shop called The Gridiron while going to college.

“It was fun, but it was just not the right time for me to do that because, at that time, I had to make a living and it was tough to do that at that age,” Johnson said.

Now, his main enterprise, Johnson Landscape, affords him the chance to revive his sports card business. It happens to coincide with a rebirth of the industry as a whole.

“The number one thing that re-energized the sports card industry is COVID," Johnson said. "Everybody was at home, stuck not being able to go anywhere, couldn’t travel anywhere and everybody started digging through their old collections.”

Now, decades after selling The Gridiron, Johnson is back to showing customers high-profile cards both old and new.

A familiar passion he hopes will continue to thrive in a reinvigorated market.